Although there has been a significant shift in the past decade towards the purchase of goods and services online, there are still a number of products purchased over the phone. However, many of these over-the-phone purchases are prompted by advertisements and promotions on the Internet. For media buyers, it is difficult to manage and measure the return on their investment for online, offline, and/or mobile advertisements that result in calls. In many cases, revenue is lost when a promotion results in a phone call that cannot be tracked back to the media buyer or web property carrying the advertisement.
Currently, there are organizations that publish content of interest to an audience of web users. Many of these organizations and distribution partners (termed “affiliates” or “publishers”), generate revenue through advertisements displayed in association with their content. Typically, the advertisements on a web page contain only a limited amount of information but include a link to advertiser web sites that provide further details often including a phone address (e.g., a phone number). If a potential customer calls the phone address to make a purchase from the advertiser, instead of making the purchase online, conventionally it may be difficult or impossible to determine which advertisements resulted in that lead. Such sales/lead tracking and Return On Investment (ROI) optimization is particularly challenging when there are multiple advertisements displayed on different online advertising channels while the sales transaction takes place in another medium (e.g., wireline and wireless telephony). In the case where a single advertisement is associated with a designated phone address and a suitable call tracking solution, the advertisement's performance may be easily determined; all calls to the phone address and all sales that resulted from the calls are driven by the aforementioned ad. However, it is rare that an advertising campaign only consists of a single ad and that the single ad is placed in a single advertising channel. A business with a series of online, offline, and/or mobile promotions (e.g., separate media outlets) will not likely be able to determine which advertisements were the most effective if all of the advertisements drive calls to one phone address.
What is needed are voice, fax, and/or video telephony capabilities integrated with marketing campaigns of varying complexity (e.g., simple or sophisticated marketing campaigns) which enable advertisers to determine and/or credit online promotions with offline telephony experiences. In addition, because these telephony experiences in association with campaigns may be subject to fraudulent communications, certain embodiments described herein are provisioned and configured with appropriate fraud countermeasures.